HEW LORIMER

Right - 'Our Lady of the Isles' on South Uist, by Hew Lorimer. Lorimer's child is supported by its mother as the Outer Hebrides clings to the North West of the Scottish Mainland and European Continent.
Carrick was never part of the inner circle of artists favoured by Sir Robert Lorimer. However when his son Hew decided on an artistic career it was Carrick who ensured that he received the best training possible when he began attending the Edinburgh College of Art in 1930. Hew Lorimer went on to establish himself as a leading artist developing a clean style of carving in granite in which form was simplified without abandoning the figurative tradition. Lorimer favoured granite, a material which Carrick never worked in. Lorimer's work was also greatly influenced by English sculptor Eric Gill and worked with the artist for a time.
In his essay on Hew Lorimer Duncan MacMillan wrote 'It was he [Carrick] who encouraged young Lorimer's nascent ambition to see his art integrated with his spiritual life. Direct stone carving seemed particularly well-suited to this end. There were the great traditions of Romanesque and Gothic religious sculpture, with which Lorimer had already begun to familiarise himself, to serve as an inspiration. Stone-carving, too, suggests the simplest and most unambiguous realisation of the idea of truth to material.'

In a letter to the author in 1992 Hew Lorimer said of Carrick that -
"He was a darling man. He encouraged me to go in for sculpture. If he had had more influence the RSA wouldn't be folding up now as it appears to be doing!...He had a much clearer and better sense of the fundamental difference between modelling and carving, and he was never overwhelmed by the painters who had no understanding of the damage the preponderance of [their] influence did...I had the great good fortune of working at Eric Gill's place, he carried me on where Carrick left off."